Album Notes
"When I first started playing music professionally, my thought was, "If I can't climb on my guitar and float down the river on it, I shouldn't waste my time." What I meant by that was, if I'm not relevant as a solo singer-songwriter, I won't be relevant with a band behind me either. It is in that spirit that I'm doing this project eight years later. We live now in a musical age where you could go your whole life and never hear "honest" music or a transparent recording. Even many live shows are propped up with "non-organic" extras and recordings that can be made to sound like just about anything with editing software. I'm not even against any of that in principle...and for a lot of indies, those tools save money in studio. But when it hit me hard was when I learned this year that even an iconic American recording from decades ago was pieced together from many different vocal cuts. I thought, "Wow, one of my favorite songs of all time is actually twenty-four different vocal takes mashed up!" With this project, what you'll get is straight Luke Austin Daugherty, solo, with no edited shenanigans. Guitar, vocals, and harmonica laid down in real time. My voice is what I really sound like and that is how I really play...all for better or worse. "Half Life" is a truly honest recording.
"Half Life" is a project split down the middle. Half of the songs were written in a time when everything made sense to me and half written at a time when they didn't. The same writer, the same heart, and the same guitar, but different economies of reality. I believe an artist must be true to who they are in the moment and they must be transparent in their art...anything less is a disservice to the audience of that art in whatever form. If you do or say something you regret later, that is just part of it. But without giving yourself true creative license AND accountability to your form, I don't think anything worthwhile can be achieved...at least not that will genuinely move people. My greatest hope is that someday a person will go into a thrift store when CDs are antiques and I'm dead...grab an old copy of this on a whim...pop it into their vintage CD player...listen to these songs and say, "My God...this is real." As Huddie Ledbetter was to me as a boy, I hope to be that person to someone else. These songs were born from Jamaica Queens to Friendship, Indiana and from memories decades past to thoughts of eternity to come. I hope you enjoy it." Luke Austin Daugherty
